The Future of IT Management

What does the future of IT management look like?

74% of organizations report technology as being a primary factor in reaching business objectives. IT is being recognized by business leaders as a key contributor to revenue growth and improving customer service. The most innovative and profitable organizations recognize the importance of establishing strategic IT maturity goals. As technology continues to evolve and integrate into multiple units within the business, what can organizations do to optimize IT management?

Changing IT Department Focus

Goodbye maintaining, hello transforming. IT departments that are distracted by a mix of infrastructure and tooling are typically stuck in a reactive mode that struggles to advance the maturity of business operations. Additionally, IT departments are moving away from the procurement business as they are seeing hardware and software expenditures reduced as cloud platforms are helping them save on hardware and licensing. While hardware and software expenditures are reduced, investments in technology that can help transform business operations are increasing. According to Gartner, 40% of CIOs plan to invest more budget into technology for customer services next year. It’s apparent that a major shift is occurring and IT Departments are being asked to do more than simply “keep the lights on”. IT is becoming more integrated into other units of the business. As IT transformation is realized, technical support will cover a wider spectrum of responsibilities. Demand for new technical skills, soft skills, and specialization will change how firms source IT talent.

What does Gartner say about IT management?

Gartner recommends that firms use a bimodal approach to managing their IT day to day operations. Gartner defines “bimodal IT”, as an IT service delivery method that allows IT departments to focus into two separate modes: stability and agility. The former encompasses day to day IT management, while the latter is focused on innovation and identifying new technologies to help meet business objectives. A scaling bimodal approach can help firms transform and achieve; increased speed, agility, and collaboration across the business. To adopt a bimodal approach to service delivery, IT leaders are choosing to partner with a Managed Services Provider to help fill the skills gap and capacity restrictions of their current IT teams.

How can organizations Reduce IT Support Costs?

According to a survey by CompTIA, 93% of firms that outsource some part of their IT operations to a Managed Services Provider (MSP) reported meeting or exceeding their cost-savings expectations. 72% of these firms reported making no significant changes to their in-house IT staff. So how did these firms save money without downsizing their current IT teams? MSPs provide firms with access to resources and technology that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive for their IT departments. By outsourcing commodity IT services to an MSP, such as routine infrastructure maintenance, firms can achieve cost savings instead of hiring additional dedicated IT staff.

Trending Up: Utilization of Managed Service Providers and Partners

By 2020, IT teams will be smaller and will spend less time “keeping the lights on” and more time managing partners and providers. Complex IT environments of the future will require a multisourcing strategy that provides firms with access to a deeper bench of talent and resources at a more affordable price. Research from Everest Group show that 75% of an IT department’s time is still taken up with maintaining systems. For IT to truly provide value to the business these technical support responsibilities will be increasingly outsourced to service providers. Leading service providers will also provide business oriented strategic advice and will help create visibility into technology ROI. By outsourcing the responsibilities of technical support, IT teams will be enabled to remain agile and focus on innovation.

CompTIA reports that 38% of firms that decide to partner with an MSP to handle routine IT operations, do so primarily to free up their in-house IT teams to manage strategic business maturity projects that increase customer engagement and employee productivity. Mid-market IT leaders attempting to keep up with new technology skills and the demand from business units to out maneuver their competitors, will need to adopt a bimodal service delivery model and consider using an MSP to help scale and achieve results.